Sing
by Mello Love
Summary: After Christine Daae's death, Raoul turns to alcohol and violence, and their daughter turns to silence. When brutally sent away to the Opera House, will someone give Di'Anna Daae a reason to sing? INACTIVE for the time being.
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1: Sing**_

* * *

In the spring, my mind always begins to wander…My heart tossing from wanting the snow to wanting the sun…and sadly, I get neither.

I sit here and write this to you…Diary? Journal? Let's just be more simple, and say it is you, the audience, the sentient being of which I can pour every ounce of my heartfelt emotion onto-

I'm sounding a bit like my father. Melodramatic as he always is, seeing as he's always drunk. And yet somehow he still retains the businessman's eye for good investments and such…thankfully I have been reduced to an orphan waif out on the street by his outrageous affliction with liquor.

Ever since my mothers passing, I feel as if I've been another child altogether. How queer; None of my friends would think that they are still children. Indeed, 16 is close to being eligible for wedlock, as so many of my friends love to squeal about.

I believe that, even if this is just my ramblings, this is the first time that I have 'spoken' in almost a year. I believe it drives my father farther from me because of this very same thought…I will not speak. The sound of my voice is too much alike to that of my mothers. The thought of her is hardly bearable…but I suppose that since I am in her dressing room at this very moment it can't hurt me further to write about her.

Maybe it would be best to cut off my ramblings for now? I hear the clock chiming not to far away, and there are too many flights of stairs that I must go down in order to meet my father for dinner. The Opera House is so immense…But no matter how much I can feel her here with me, there is only one thought that saves me from nightmares.

The dream, rather. Of singing again. Will someone give me a reason to sing?

Signed,

_Anna_

* * *

It has been almost a year since young Di'Anna Daae de Chagny's hesitant, yet swift, move into the opera house. Her father could not stand the sight of her any longer, sitting alone in her room, simply reading. The girl would not speak, she would only write…the maids at their home learned to judge her moods by what she was reading, and what she was wearing.

If her loosely curled brunette hair was tied up, she was only vaguely interested in what she was reading. Just something to pass the time. Yet when it was down, curling like a veil around the sides of her face, she was intensely interested in the subject at hand.

Her mood was easy enough to decipher, depending on the color of the clothing she wore. If the color was darker, she was upset, or merely not in a pleasant mood, and vice versa for lighter colors. With her pale features, a strikingly beautiful combination of her father, Raoul de Chagny, and her mother, Christine Daae.

All of this mattered little to Monsieur de Chagny. Ever since his wife's death, he has tried to trudge on, facing the world with a bleak outlook on life, caring little for the inner turmoil of his young daughter. On the eve of Christine's death, he sought only the comfort of finding his wife in his daughter. He begged her, whiskey heavy on his breath, to sing for him, to sing for her mother, and she would do no such thing. It was on that night that she suffered a broken bone for the first time, being roughly tossed away by her unstable father. It was on that night that she vowed to never speak again. The one thing that connected her to her mother would never bring heartache to her, or her family, ever again.

Or so she hoped. A week went by, a month, and her father's state only worsened. Locked away in his lavish study, a bottle of some sort of liquor his only companion and his only confidant, he began to whittle away at his relationship to his daughter. No longer would he lavish her with presents, coddle her and give in to her requests. He would not ask If she needed or wanted things, new books or new frocks. For she never asked for anything, wanting to be as little of a reminder of her mother as possible. And for this childish hope, and this sad feeling of responsibility, he hated the young girl.

On the next eve of his wife's death, the young girl was 16, and had not spoken a word. Her father could bear it no longer, and he sent her away to the opera house. The scene went somewhat like this…

It was dark. A chilling spring morning, Di'Anna was torn from underneath her blankets, by a cold, unfeeling hand. No sound escaped her lips and she was pulled out of her room, down the stairs. In nothing but a nightdress, she was cast out of her own front door.

'You do not care to speak? Then you will not care to work for a living. Go, and dance, and get drunk and sell yourself. I care enough for your mother, to know that you are the reason she died!' He took a swallow of his bottle, some of it dribbling down his chin. The maids had rushed to the door, hearing the commotion, and one bravely tried to step out of the doorway.

'Get back!' a brutal slap was delivered to the young maids face, and the rest watched on, their faces torn, and horrified.

'Don't you _ever_,' he took another swallow, '_EVER_ step foot on this doorstep again. Cast away the de Chagny name from your breast, and go back to your _ROOTS, Di'Anna! Go be a beggar wretch on the doorstep of the opera, and see how they receive you!' _He stalked back to the doorstep, shouting at the maids to give her no aid, and slammed the door.

Young Di'Anna, sixteen, laid on the cold cobblestone road, in nothing but a nightdress, shaking. And just as they would each night, silent tears ran down her cheeks.

She struggled to her feet, realizing that something in her arm was either broken or badly sprained. She wiped her face with her other arm, and began to walk in the general direction of the opera house, knowing nothing else that could be done.

* * *

Meg Giry was on her way out of the Opera House, off on a personal errand when she saw a young girl, collapsed on the steps leading up to the Opera House. It was late, and the temperature was much too chilly for simply a nightdress to be clinging to the young girls slender frame. Her heart fluttered; Was she dead? Was there some terrible crime committed, right on the doorstep of the Opera house? She knelt beside the girl, gently laying her fingers upon her. All she felt on her fingertips was cold flesh. Her hand went to her mouth, as she nearly flew back up the steps. Flinging open the doors, she ran to the sleeping quarters of all of the dancers, frantically calling for someone to help her carry the girl inside. Her mother, frail as she was, came hurrying up to her daughter, then began to tap the wall with her cane.

"_Wake up! One of you morons put yourself to good use! We have a young girl who might be dead outside!" _Some of the more respectable stagehands began to rouse themselves, throwing on their trousers and boots.

"_I'll only need two of you." _She said, glaring down the other three, less reputable men who had hastily dressed.

Taking two of the men with them, she and Meg began to move their lips, almost in unison, in a fervent prayer for the young girls life.

* * *

_Authors Notes:_

_Hello Everyone! This is just the beginning of what I hope to be a very intricate story. However, I have a few things I'd like to mention. _

_This is based loosely on the more recent Phantom of the Opera film. Loosely. Simply because certain things in the book do not mesh well with my concept._

_Also, Just to clarify, I've decided that Erik, whilst Christine was present, was nearly the same age as both Raoul and herself. That way, he's only in his early thirties. As was common in that time, and as Di'Anna stated in her Diary entry, women were of age to be married very early. Just to clarify._

_I hope you enjoyed my first work, and I'd love to get comments and reviews from you all._

_-Mello_


	2. Chapter 2

Di'Anna's Diary Entry

I woke up this morning in unfamiliar clothes. In an unfamiliar room, with unfamiliar people around me. And yet I felt more comfortable, more safe, in the arms of complete strangers, than in the same home as my father.

And then I heard a voice.

"Mother…she does look rather chilled, still. Is it quite necessary for us to go practice?"

The Giry women sat solemnly across from the recently rescued Di'Anna Daae, laying in her mother's bed. They knew it was her, simply from her looks. She looked much like her father, the same petite, button nose, the gracefully high cheekbones, the refined jaw line that curved just so, giving her a very womanly profile. Her hair was thick and curly, like her mothers, but honey blonde in color.

"Meg, we must. You know how much a stir it will be, having Christine Daae's daughter in the Opera house." Her mother's voice was husky, breathless. She was as excited as could be expected for a woman of her age. She was wringing a small cloth in her hands, debating what she should do.

"But mother…she could wake up! She'd be terrified, at the least! Wouldn't you think?" Meg's small, round eyes were widened, a urgent sense of responsibility overwhelming her faculties.

"Calm yourself, child," her mother scolded, "She will be fine. Knowing Raoul…this was more than likely his own doing. She will be thankful." Her lips pursed in thought, as she threw down the cloth in her hand.

"She will be fine. We shall go to rehearsal as usual, act as though nothing has happened," she spoke with an air of finality as she stood to leave, "We will bring her some breakfast after the first rehearsal today."

"But what of the men who know she's here?," Meg responded, standing as well. It was not wise to challenge Madame Giry after she has set her mind to an action. "Shall we simply lock the door? Hide the key?"

"Precisely." Her daughter bit her lip anxiously, and looked back at the slender ghost of a woman sleeping in the same bed her mother had slept in. She looked at peace, Meg would have described her as 'angelic' in her state.

"Then I shall keep the key." Meg decided, slipping out after her mother, locking the door behind her, and slipping the key in between her breasts, for safekeeping.

Beautiful, spiteful…depth and darkness and black and the rank odor of the lake and the dead who sleep soundly beneath it's mirrored surface…my senses more alive than ever they had been, my eyes feeling for once in a long while the ability to see more than to feel, the ability to combine more than one sense at a time and truly, truly be. Along with my heart beat, this mortal thing that resides in my chest…along with it keeping to a steadily increasing tattoo…I cannot fathom the reasons why a mere girl would stir such a thing in myself.

It had not been so long since that last kiss, that last kiss which drove me to complete madness, past killing, past death, past limbo. I am and are and will be, and yet no one knows I exist.

I feel for the girl, bones barely sheathed in her own skin. Her beautiful, flawless skin. She makes me think of her, the one who tore my mind from me, my heart from me, and yet I still breathe.

In.

And out.

I breathe and yet I do not feel the relief of breath, I do not feel a steadying force in my heart. I feel nothing but this increased excitement, a thrill. Fear and want and more fear. Emotions suppressed for many years exploding to the surface of my being. And yet I truly can see her.

The hole in the wall is quite small. Only large enough to give me a pinprick of a view, hardly a taste of the beauty laying on Christine's bed.

Ah, to know that I can even speak her name in my thoughts is thrilling. To know I can even sigh, reach out, attempt to open the mirror again, for the first time in many years…it is a beautiful occurrence. Beautiful, spiteful.

How can a creature that I have yet to hear speak make me want to sing to her? But a broken, fragile hummingbird in the nest of dragons, she lays with her chest barely moving as she breathes.

Di'Anna's Diary Entry

I woke this morning to find myself locked in a rather luxurious room. I'm only slightly frightened, because, well, who would lock me inside a room, other than my father? Yet, I feel that this predicament is not an immediately dangerous one. I feel like I'm being watched, yet I know that isn't so.

My new clothes have me only slightly worried, knowing that someone changed me. It's an odd sort of feeling, I must admit. I'm curious as to whom, and yet I fervently pray that it wasn't a male, if only because I would have a hard time being grateful towards such a gesture.

I'm really quite relieved to find you, diary, sitting on the bedside table. It makes me happy to think that my only companion has not been taken from me as well. Hopefully I can find some sort of answers as to where I am, and why this room smells so pleasantly of bouquets.

Your's truly,

Anna


End file.
